Deal value of biotech acquistions by Big Pharma is up almost 90% for 2008.
Biggest proposed deal thus far is Switzerland's Roche's $44m bid for Genentech, the San Francisco oncology-focused lab, of which it already owns a controlling share.
Drugs are a multi-billion dollar business. World's best-selling drug Lipitor, from Pfizer, generated $8.1 billion in sales in 2007. Lipitor is cholesterol-lowering medication.
Earlier this year, Daiichi Sankyo took over Malvinder Singh's Ranbaxy in a cash-deal worth $4.6bn. Ranbaxy is known for challenging the patents of pharmaceutical companies and pioneering the generic drugs industry.
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
FDIC puts 117 banks on the watchlist
FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Company) that insures deposits (generally up to a value of $100,000) has put 117 banks on their watchlist, for deficiencies in finance, operations or management that threaten their viability as a business. FDIC publishes its watchlist on a quarterly basis.
Failure to administer corrective action results in the bank being sold or taken over by FDIC, or combination of both (FDIC can take over a bank and then sell its assets e.g. takeover of IndyMac Bancorp (US mortgage lender) following its failure in July 2008.
To put this into perspective, during the S&L crisis of the late 80s and early 90s, about 1500 banks were on the watchlist (about 12 times as many as presently).
Failure to administer corrective action results in the bank being sold or taken over by FDIC, or combination of both (FDIC can take over a bank and then sell its assets e.g. takeover of IndyMac Bancorp (US mortgage lender) following its failure in July 2008.
To put this into perspective, during the S&L crisis of the late 80s and early 90s, about 1500 banks were on the watchlist (about 12 times as many as presently).
Tuesday, 12 August 2008
South Korea's LG Electronics Record 2nd Quarter
Profits came from record sales of its premium mobile phones and flat panel televisions.
The FT reported "The company shipped a record 27.7m units thanks to strong demand for its high-end touchscreen phones like the Secret and the Viewty".
The FT reported "The company shipped a record 27.7m units thanks to strong demand for its high-end touchscreen phones like the Secret and the Viewty".
Recessionary Innovation
Bruce Nussbaum in BusinessWeek identifies some of the key mistakes companies make.
Number 10 on Bruce's list is "Retreat into Walled Castles", to quote Bruce: "cutting back on outside consultancies is seen as a quick way to save money. Yet one of the key ways of introducing change into a business culture is to bring in outside innovation and design consultants. They know what companies across a broad range of industries around the world are doing to promote change. Not receiving this information can hurt a company's global competitive position."
Recession provides time and opportunity for product development. When the economy is in full-swing there is absolutely no time for new development. As Bruce explains:
"Winners always emerge out of recessions and they almost always beat their competition on the basis of something new. Apple worked on iTunes, iPod and its retail stores during the last recession and came out swinging once growth returned to destroy its competition".
Identify ten best strategies...
Innovation is the last competitive edge left, unless you want to compete only on price. Is it time we had some innovation in economics? Paul Krugman in the NY Times has a great article "How did Economists Get it So Wrong?"
Number 10 on Bruce's list is "Retreat into Walled Castles", to quote Bruce: "cutting back on outside consultancies is seen as a quick way to save money. Yet one of the key ways of introducing change into a business culture is to bring in outside innovation and design consultants. They know what companies across a broad range of industries around the world are doing to promote change. Not receiving this information can hurt a company's global competitive position."
Recession provides time and opportunity for product development. When the economy is in full-swing there is absolutely no time for new development. As Bruce explains:
"Winners always emerge out of recessions and they almost always beat their competition on the basis of something new. Apple worked on iTunes, iPod and its retail stores during the last recession and came out swinging once growth returned to destroy its competition".
Identify ten best strategies...
Innovation is the last competitive edge left, unless you want to compete only on price. Is it time we had some innovation in economics? Paul Krugman in the NY Times has a great article "How did Economists Get it So Wrong?"
Nokia takes over Symbian, Trolltech in 2008
Finland-based Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, has paid 264m euros to buy out UK-based Symbian, to advance its mobile internet innovation strategy. Symbian was founded in 1998 by Ericsson, Motorola, Nokia and Psion. Nokia's S60 range of mobiles are built on Symbian OS.
More than 200 million Symbian-OS phones have been shipped in the 10 years of the company's operation.
Nokia has also taken over Norwegian company TrollTech this year, who supply the GUI toolkit for Motorola's Linux phones. Following the announcement, Motorola will be switching over to GTK, although no final date has been announced. Motorola are part of Limo foundation.
Nokia is looking to secure lead-time in innovation over Google's Android strategy. Android SDK allows developers to use Java on Linux to build applications for the Android mobile software stack. Google also have an Eclipse plug-in for Android development and Python build tools.
To read about mobile Linux innovation from a more techie perspective read linuxdevices.com.
More than 200 million Symbian-OS phones have been shipped in the 10 years of the company's operation.
Nokia has also taken over Norwegian company TrollTech this year, who supply the GUI toolkit for Motorola's Linux phones. Following the announcement, Motorola will be switching over to GTK, although no final date has been announced. Motorola are part of Limo foundation.
Nokia is looking to secure lead-time in innovation over Google's Android strategy. Android SDK allows developers to use Java on Linux to build applications for the Android mobile software stack. Google also have an Eclipse plug-in for Android development and Python build tools.
To read about mobile Linux innovation from a more techie perspective read linuxdevices.com.
£691m loss for RBS in first half of 2008
RBS, owners of NatWest Bank, have posted £691m loss for first half 2008. This compares with £5bn profit for first half 2007. Shares went up 2.7% as the loss was less than analysts expected. Much of the losses stem from ABN Amro acquired by RBS last year. To boost cash reserves, RBS announced in April its plans to conduct a rights issue, selling shares worth £12bn, the biggest in UK corporate history (rights issue - issue extra shares and offer them to existing shareholders usually at a discount to the current share price).
The banks hardest hit in the credit crunch have been Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS. JPMorgan have also reported losses of $1.5billion to date after hedges for the July-September quarter (Q3).
The collapse of the subprime mortgage market and resultant losses have caused money market funds to stop buying asset-backed commercial paper forcing funds to unwind holdings and drive up yields.
The banks hardest hit in the credit crunch have been Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS. JPMorgan have also reported losses of $1.5billion to date after hedges for the July-September quarter (Q3).
The collapse of the subprime mortgage market and resultant losses have caused money market funds to stop buying asset-backed commercial paper forcing funds to unwind holdings and drive up yields.
Saturday, 2 August 2008
73% slump in quarterly profit for Santa Clara's Sun
Sun Microsystem's quarterly profit fell 73% resulting from slumping sales to US companies and restructuring charges. Sun also announced expansion of stock buyback plan by $1bn.
Read CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog here:
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
Jonathan became SUN's CEO in 2006, succeeding previous CEO Scott McNealy, who co-founded the company in 1982.
A bit of background on SUN; it was formed in 1982, with four employees. One of its founders was Andreas Bechtolsheim, who stayed with the company till October 2008 and served as its Vice President of Technology as well as a member of its executive management team. He got an MS from CMU (Pittsburgh) in 1976. In 1984 (the topic of a great George Orwell novel) it introduced NFS technology, which it licensed free to industry. In 1988, SUN reached $1bn in revenue.
Sun has a presence across the UK. Here are links to the London CBC and the UK Headquarters in Camberley, Surrey (South-West of London (South-east of England) -> Greenwich, Dulwich, Wimbledon, Esher, Woking, Camberley).
Read CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog here:
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
Jonathan became SUN's CEO in 2006, succeeding previous CEO Scott McNealy, who co-founded the company in 1982.
A bit of background on SUN; it was formed in 1982, with four employees. One of its founders was Andreas Bechtolsheim, who stayed with the company till October 2008 and served as its Vice President of Technology as well as a member of its executive management team. He got an MS from CMU (Pittsburgh) in 1976. In 1984 (the topic of a great George Orwell novel) it introduced NFS technology, which it licensed free to industry. In 1988, SUN reached $1bn in revenue.
Sun has a presence across the UK. Here are links to the London CBC and the UK Headquarters in Camberley, Surrey (South-West of London (South-east of England) -> Greenwich, Dulwich, Wimbledon, Esher, Woking, Camberley).
Friday, 1 August 2008
Plans to Nationalise Bank of Venezuela
Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, has announced plans to nationalise Bank of Venezuela (Banco de Venezuela), one of the country's largest banks currently owned by Grupo Santander.
This is not the first nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela. It was nationalized in 1994 after a massive banking crisis which bankrupted 60 percent of the banking sector, privatized again 2 years later in 1996 and bought by the Spanish banking giant Grupo Santander for only 430 million US dollars.
Chavez was quoted as saying "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" (the dogs bark, therefore the caravan is moving).
This is not the first nationalisation of Banco de Venezuela. It was nationalized in 1994 after a massive banking crisis which bankrupted 60 percent of the banking sector, privatized again 2 years later in 1996 and bought by the Spanish banking giant Grupo Santander for only 430 million US dollars.
Chavez was quoted as saying "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" (the dogs bark, therefore the caravan is moving).
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